The first Christmas tree in Wyoming was a simple spruce decorated with candles by German missionaries. It was 1858 at Deer Creek, near present-day Glenrock, just seven years after the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie.

Missionaries Jakob Schmidt and Moritz Braeuninger had arrived to work among the nomadic Crow tribe near the Yellowstone River and had soon expanded their evangelism to include the Cheyenne and Arapaho near Deer Creek Station.

According to the Rev. Albert Keiser, the Lutheran missionaries celebrated according to German fashion.

They had been given housing by Indian Agent Twiss, buildings abandoned by Mormons during the Utah War just a year before.

“There were presents, and for the festival they sung Luther’s hymn,” Keiser wrote in his 1922 book “Lutheran Mission Work

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